Today’s business leadership lacks infinite vision: Simon Sinek

• In an infinite game your only true competitor is yourself
• so many businesses open up and flourish only to go bust within a short space of time
• Regulations are a much lower standard than ethics, it lowers the standard of business
  
   

By Darshana Abayasingha

Simon Sinek says today’s business leadership sucks! He says that if corporates and their leadership are doing well, he wouldn’t have a career, and that it is embarrassing there is demand for his work which gives sense there is “something missing”. 

The globally-acclaimed organisational consultant and author was speaking at the World Business Forum held in London earlier this month, where he points out there is “a massive leadership vacuum in the world today”. 

We used to be able to point to so many compelling leaders of organisations back in the day but the numbers are much smaller now, and Sinek feels the situation is compounded by modern business schools who “have failed us” by choosing to just teach management – which includes viewing employees as a liability or expense – as opposed to how to take on roles of effective leadership. 

The problem, Sinek says, is that most business leaders in today’s milieu choose a finite mindset as opposed to an infinite vision, which is why so many businesses open up and flourish only to go bust within a short space of time. Leaders need to adopt an infinite mindset to lead their organisations and people to long-term success, he states. 

Too many leaders are playing with the wrong mindsets in the game they are in; to the detriments of their own businesses, Sinek says. How do we lead with an infinite mindset? To do that, first leadership must present a just cause – a purpose. Secondly, they must build trusting teams, and then they need worthy rivals. Alongside the capacity for existential flexibility, finally good leaders must possess the courage to lead.

“Let’s look at number one. Does your organisation give employees a cause so just that they will be willing to sacrifice some of their own interests to achieve that cause? This has nothing to do with the products or services you sell. It is all about are you making people feel part of something bigger than themselves – a vision to advance – that they feel it is worth a sacrifice.

“Building trusting teams; a trusting team is a place where people feel safe not vulnerable, where the leadership is engaged with its employees in their development journey and in their tasks whilst adding real value. Almost always when there is a performance issue, almost always when there are customer service issues, it’s rarely a people issue. This is because of leaders. There are anomalies of course, but it is almost always the leadership or the leadership environment that creates issues. If you want to play an infinite game you need trusting teams. Leadership is a lifestyle that will enable you to produce teams that love each other and deliver value.

“When we have competitors, we adopt a mindset we need to beat them. But the problem is this in an infinite game. A worthy rival is someone worthy of comparison, so you can work to improve yourself. You can have many of them. You like them, you respect them. In an infinite game your only true competitor is yourself. In the personal computer industry, Apple’s early rivals were IBM. Apple represented the pirates and IBM were the status quo or the navy, so to speak. But then IBM fell out of the game, but that doesn’t mean Apple had won. It means there were other players in the game, and IBM was replaced by Microsoft and now its Google and Facebook and companies like that. The fight is no longer necessarily about PCs and status quo, but issues like privacy and Apple’s ‘just cause’ is still alive and well representing individual interests rather than the corporates’. 

“Leadership needs to make profound strategic shifts in order to better advance the cause. Failure to do so can lead to the demise of your organisation. Blockbuster no longer exists and Netflix dominates the industry. If you are not willing to blow up your company the market will. Even if it means taking a short-term hit. It’s like the Kodak example where they suppressed digital camera technology in fear it would cannibalise film sales, because the company had invested there. But because they refused to take the existential flex they don’t exist now. All these things are very difficult to do. It is extremely hard with so many pressures coming to make the finite short-term decisions. This is where strong and courageous leadership comes in,” Sinek explains.

Speaking further, Sinek states the world needs to completely reimagine businesses that exist. There is a need to reject finite mindsets of the ’80s and ’90s, and embrace infinite mindsets suited for the next millennium. Infinite thinking brings fresh ideas, innovation and builds stronger teams. Laws and regulations are a much lower standard than ethics, he adds, and this is one of the problems in the world today as it lowers the standard of business. It’s predominantly driven by the ethos to maximise profits within the bounds of the law. 

It’s like the Titanic, he says. They only put enough lifeboats as required by regulations, which was one quarter of what was really required. The titanic broke no laws, but we all know what happened. Laws are too low a standard and businesses need to consider real ethics, he says. 

“Though we don’t get to choose the rules, we get to choose how we play. It’s about becoming a better leader a better version of you. Look at the mind of finite-minded entrepreneurs, then go look at their relationships with their children. It paints a different story. I asked Sir Richard Branson, ‘How should we judge you after you die? What about Virgin are you most proud of?’ He said, ‘Do not judge me by anything I have done at Virgin, you judge me by the quality of my children.’ To become a leader with an infinite vision; it’s a choice you make.”

Leadership can be lonely, thankless and exhausting, and to find the energy it can be difficult, he adds, but you could find it in other people. The whole obsession we have with work life balance makes him uncomfortable, as it means our work and lives are in opposition. But the only difference is the clothes we wear and the tables we sit at; it’s all about us, he says. 

“The reason why our friends love us is the same reason why our colleagues love us. The energy we get won’t come from yoga, you can do more yoga and meditate a little longer and you can feel amazing after the class, but you will still hate the next day at work. The energy we have to keep doing it comes from our friends and our support networks. Invest more in deep meaning relationships,” Sinek advices.